


Sensory Integration

by settledownfrohike



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Episode: s08e16 Three Words, Extended Scene, F/M, Fictober, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-16
Updated: 2017-10-16
Packaged: 2019-01-18 09:50:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12385758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/settledownfrohike/pseuds/settledownfrohike
Summary: fic prompt: Will you please please rewrite the scene where Mulder tells Scully he's happy for her but he's just not sure where he fits in. Honestly your majestic writing abilities are the only thing that can fix it!!!!





	Sensory Integration

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry!! Big long preface ahead!!! First, I must apologize to @scully-loves-ruthie upfront. This probably isn’t exactly what you asked for. I have a real inability to write against canon though I wish I could. Fic is a band-aid of sorts for me but I can only write (not read mind you, shove that AU up my ass all day I’ll love it) what could in some realm, be canon. I can’t dangle impossible perfection in front of myself or immerse myself in such a way as to write it, because it only reminds me of what can’t have, and then I get all morose about the way things are. So this isn’t a rewrite of this scene so much as it is me trying to babble away my confusion and former hatred for it and then exteding it to my liking. I utterly HATED this scene, and damn you, you made me watch it over and over and over and over. It was misery. But I have to thank you, because it was cathartic in a sense. It forced me to deal with my own feelings of blame toward Mulder for going off on his own and leaving Scully behind and find some empathy down in my cold dead heart. So I hope in light of all of this, you will forgive me, friend. 
> 
> Oh! and one more thing, the ever fabulous @kateyes224 wrote a true re-write of this scene a while back called Three Words More. If you want quality work, skip mine and read hers. :)

He hasn’t told her this for fear she’d have kept him incarcerated, but he’s still fighting waves of nausea induced by the sensation of free fall every few minutes. His stomach rolls end over end, as if on the downslope of a rollercoaster. His feet still don’t feel as if they’ve touched ground, which is ironic for a man who was 6 feet under its surface not 36 hours ago. He feels suspended above this world, tethered only by the clinical tone of her voice as she catalogues his condition. It is the only thing that feels like home right now, and God, he wants to be home, he does, but he’s an apparition, a ghost of himself, floating along a tour of his own life like Ebenezer Scrooge.

Only people don’t talk directly to ghosts about their scars and miraculous healing and their perfect health. They’ve been circling each other cautiously since she came to retrieve him this morning. He senses her restlessness and gets the distinct impression that she’s holding back from latching into him and falling apart. He’s grateful for her restraint, because he can’t handle sudden movements right now. If she were to approach too fast in his direction, he’d end up curled in the fetal position somewhere in a corner, protecting his vital organs. He doesn’t know how he knows this, he just does. He’s like one giant Pavlovian experiment.

Stimulus.

Response.

Repeat.

On the silent ride to his apartment, he keeps his gaze on the passing scenery, the feeling of forward motion relaxes him. In his peripheral he catches her cautious, fleeting glances, and wonders if she’s worried about him or expecting him to say something. An apology perhaps, but that’s probably just because he feels like he owes her one. There is at least that much of his former self left. He knows, on some level, that this is at least partly his fault. He left her to protect her, his intentions valiant, the result catastrophic. That too, at least, feels familiar.

The walk out of the elevator down his hallway is akin to a prisoner being led to his cell. He imagines the catcalls from either side. Wonders if they are similar to the whispers she must’ve endured in his absence.

 

_“Hear that? Ol’ Spooky finally got what he always wanted– a ride in a spaceship!!”_

 

_“Typical asshole, right? He’d have made a shitty father anyway. Shame he had to knock her up before he took off this time.”_

Had he, though? Does she assume he assumes it’s his? He knows her. Knows she’d have never pursued this again so quickly without him. Would she?With someone anonymous?  Is it..he…she.. his? 

The nausea assaults him once again at the door. A reckoning lies beyond, and he isn’t sure footed enough yet to do anything but react. He hopes for something else familiar to grasp on to once they walk in, the scent of burnt coffee or old laundry, dishes in the sink, but the echo of her heels on the hardwood is the only thing that registers. For a place that is full to the brim still of his possessions, the sound only reinforces the impression of emptiness. It seems to him now a shrine, a collection of things in memoriam. He has waited much too long to speak at this point he knows. He doesn’t want to frighten her. His pulse races in his ears.

 

_Say._

_Something._

“It looks different.” His voice doesn’t shake like he thought it would.

“It’s clean.” Her humor astounds him; it is without a trace of bitterness. He knows she is not angry, but at this point he would understand if she were exasperated. He’s drawn immediately to the serene glow of the tank and a fleeting bubble of giddy reunion rises in his chest, immediately followed by shame for not feeling the same around her. Again something is off, but in the right way. He recognizes something as missing, and it’s a relief. 

“I’m missing a molly.”

“Yea,” she chuffs, “ she wasn’t as lucky as you.”

Dread floods his senses once more as well as the need to retch, so he sits awkwardly on the desk to steady himself and prevent swaying on his feet. Being under the gun used to be what made him thrive, and now he just wants to hide. But she is being so intolerably patient there fiddling with the key he gave her in an act of good faith, and the pressure of owing her the same.. something.. everything, is weighing on him now.

“Mulder…” there is the faintest trace of impatience in her tone now, for which he cannot blame her, but the numbness he feels only serves to allow the blankest of stares in her direction.  She continues to narrate an abbreviated, watered-down recollection of her experience and he is drifting again, the rope to which he is attached to this world suddenly stretching, fraying and unraveling, because this isn’t her. She’s lying by omission on his behalf. She knows damn well he knows  _exactly_  what it was like. But she’s flailing, trying desperately to pull him to her by playing on his propensity for compassion. This particular shade of cheap manipulation isn’t her color, and even she is struggling with it.  She wants so desperately to connect with him right now, even if it is only by the shared recollection of what it is like to be utterly devastated and reborn by the absence and presence of another. Her words muddle and blur until,

“…And now to have to you back, it….” He isn’t so devoid of sensitivity not to catch the slight glimmer of tears as she trails off. But he is in no condition to provide comfort to anyone right now.

“You act like you’re surprised.” His old instincts are kicking in automatically, for which he is grateful, deflection by sarcasm is his default setting. But her response is so genuine that it smothers any relief he felt having had any words to say at all.

“I prayed a lot.”

He has always wondered himself worthy of her prayers, whether she would allow herself to pray to a god she holds in such reverence  _{the same one that he has punished with indifference for so long}_  to grant him, a nonbeliever of all things, mercy. But pray she did.

“And my prayers have been answered.”

The incredulity in the way she says it tells him she is just as astounded as he. Had  _she_  ever felt him worthy? Or was it sheer desperation that drove her to her knees?

The elephant in the room is in fact no elephant at all, the evidence of her pregnancy only now making its way into his consciousness, her firm rounded belly at such stark contrast to the exhausted slump of her shoulders and rest of her anxious, wired form. She is so beautiful to him still. Incandescent skin, and longer hair all signs that physically, she is flourishing. But her countenance is all wrong. She is like a tree branch in winter,  drained and brittle on the surface, new life burgeoning beneath.

“In more ways than one.” He makes a feeble motion toward her middle. There. He’s acknowledged it. The band-aid is off. She glances down as if she herself is only noticing her condition just now. A slew of unexpected emotions tighten his throat. Fear. Elation. Possessiveness. Resentment. Curiosity. Scully is pregnant. Very. She even waddles. He chuckles inwardly at her maternity slacks’ indention beneath her blouse.

_Scully shopping for maternity clothing._

The thought is at once light and unfathomably depressing at the same time.

“Yea.” Now even she sounds like she would be grateful for a quip, but she is capable of nothing but earnestness at the moment.

“I’m happy for you.” He wonders if she caught the catch in his voice just now. Internally he is in free fall, his stomach is swirling and his heart is racing.

His appendages are numb and the entire room is spinning. He nips at the side of his mouth enough to bring pain, enough to center his thoughts to continue,  

“I think I know…how much that means to you.” The phrase feels slimy and bitter on his tongue. When she was sick–and the unexpected recollection of that time pierces his gut like a forgotten splinter—the cancer was always a ‘that.’ The fact that he has just referred to her pregnancy as such feels so utterly wrong. He’s made her granted wish sound like an incurable condition, and he hates himself for it. He knows he’s dissociating. He knows the term, his education coming back to him like pieces of a puzzle, falling into place at random.

“Mulder…” Oh God, that voice. Whispered and rich with the emotion that only those that pray can posses.  It’s a thousand moments before the apology he’s demanding of himself is tumbling from his mouth in an almost juvenile, petulant fashion.

“I’m sorry…” he shakes his head in an effort to regroup, “I don’t mean to be cold or ungrateful I just…I have no idea where I fit in…right now.” He’s purging. Words that have been festering for days now are pouring forth, like pus from a wound, a necessity towards healing but grotesque nonetheless. The look on her face is searing and utter in its despair. She is unquestionably disappointed. Nothing, none of this is going like she thought, as she’d hoped, and it’s evident in a way that is so uncharacteristic of her usual aplomb.

He could blame hormones for rendering her so unusually transparent, But that would be too convenient. The truth is that the strife of the day-to-day without him has worn her threadbare. She has only her naked self to give now, and all that it may entail.  _Herself and someone else._

Jesus.  _Someone else_.  

Painful enlightenment forces him to soften his earlier declaration of despondency with practiced analysis. She looks as though if she speaks, she will cry. And he won’t do that to her.

“I just uh…I’m having a little trouble processing…everything.” And though basic and uncouth, it feels like the most organic thing he’s expressed yet. This, at least, is unadulterated truth. He beings to speak again, having felt like he’s gained at least some ground but she interrupts him.

“I um…” her gaze is on the floor and her expression is incredulous. It seems she too, is struggling to process, “I…I need a minute I’m sorry..” he rises out of instinct to go to her but she holds up her hand in reproach and escapes towards his bedroom. Like Pavlov’s dog, she elicits an classically conditioned response by her motion and he stays, dutiful, waiting on his next command.

He can’t help but notice the protective way she cradles her unborn as she hurries away.

In his heart of hearts he knows that this child is his. How many times on the couch in this room? One memory in particular comes unbidden. The salt and tang of the succulent flesh between her legs, pummeling into her and the helpless yelp of his given name triggering his instant release. He’d wanted her to get pregnant that night. Many times. Felt he could will it into existence beyond reason. He could make their own miracle, faith be damned, if he fucked her hard enough, came hard enough. He’d wanted to brand her from the inside out. Damned right he’d wanted this.

What is it they say about having everything you ever wanted? If he lost it now, would that feel like freedom? Is that why he wants so desperately to run right now? He wants darkness, and quiet, and constant noise. He wants to be left alone and held and he wants mostly not to feel as though he’s just jumped from a plane with no parachute and no notion of when or if he will land. His stomach pitches again, causing him to salivate.

The flush of the toilet brings him to attention and she returns, slightly flushed and with composure clearly only gained within the last few moments. She hadn’t noticed the last smear of her mascara. He’s made her cry, and he kicks himself internally. She doesn’t resume her place on the other side of the room though. She continues slowly, and purposefully to him, but she does not reach out. His heart thuds against his ribcage and he swallows against the fear of her next words. She fears them herself, its evident in the way she takes a calming breath and speaks to his clavicle.

“I need you know Mulder,”

_Oh God. It’s mine isn’t it….. It isn’t mine. She’s about to tell me. This is it…_

She swallows her apprehension and continues, “I know what it’s like…to come back…from an experience and feel…out of place.” Her name begins to form on his mouth. Her gaze is still cast carefully downward but ever the empath, she interrupts his sensed rebuttal and continues, forcing him to listen.

“But I need you to know,” and with those words her eyes fix upon his own. He remembers her now. Knows this look. Her eyes are wide enough that he notices the whites of them glisten. They are brimming with integrity and honesty and deep, abiding love.

Their history crashes over him in waves, roaring above the static of his confusion. Like wedded vows, her words ring pure and true and timeless, the look on her face then the same as it is now.

_“I’m not a part of any agenda…you’ve got to trust me…”_

 

_“Mulder I wouldn’t put myself on the line for anybody but you..”_

 

_“I just knew….”_

 

_“Mulder *fight* him…”_

 

_“I wouldn’t change a day.”_

 

_“Nothing happens in contradiction to nature, only to what we know of it…”_

 

_“If we quit now, they win…”_

 

_“ …personal interest is all that I have. And if you take that away than there is no reason for me to continue.”_

 

_“And you are mine…”_

 

A heaviness surrounds him, a soothing, gentle, bone-deep pressure. It pulls him downwards, the centrifugal force of her gaze pitching him into the dark pool of her iris and he feels finally, finally grounded, secure in memory and the totality of gravity, the finality of arrival.

 

“…when you are ready, I’ll be here,” She pauses, “ _we’ll be here_.”

Tactile sensation has found its way back, and he realizes that his palms have subconsciously come to rest on the ripened crest of her form. He feels the roll and flutter of life beneath; it is as real and tangible as it is supposed to be. It feels like hope.

\\\


End file.
